The Symbol of the Unconquered
One of only three silent films of Oscar Micheaux’s to survive is 1920’s “The Symbol of the Unconquered.” In it, a group of Black Americans fight off members of the Ku Klux Klan, renamed in the film as the Knights of the Black Cross, to protect the land of one of their own, which thieves are trying to lay claim to. In a sense, this is Micheaux’s response to the second half of “The Birth of a Nation,” wherein the Klan is a force for good against the takeover of the North, and Blacks, of the South after the Civil War, but at its heart, the film also has Black pride as one of its ideas, and what can happen when that is denied.
The film begins with Eve Mason at the bedside of her grandfather, Dick Mason, in Selma, Alabama. He is on his deathbed, and when he dies, Eve (Iris Hall) inherits a large amount of land in a place in the Northwest called Oristown. But the trip is met with hostility right away, when she wants to stay at the Driscoll Hotel. Its owner, Jefferson Driscoll (Lawrence Chenault), is a light-skinned Black man who passes as white, and hates his race, showing his disdain towards any African Americans who come to his hotel by having them sleep in the barn. Eve is the latest, and when she runs out of the barn, into a downpour, Driscoll laughs from his bed. Eve makes it to her grandfather’s land with the help of a Black prospector named Hugh Van Allen (Walker Thompson), who is nearby, and offers his assistance. His feelings for her are strong, but as he thinks she is white, he does not say anything. The plot thickens when a couple of local criminals realize they need some documents from Dick Man’s house, and they try to get them, startling Eve. Driscoll re-enters the picture after he sells his hotel, and he accidentally gets a letter intended for Van Allen, saying that his land is very valuable. Driscoll takes it to the criminals, who hope to enlist the Knights to take the land by force.
The film as it exists, which can be watched at the time of this writing (February 2021) on The Criterion Channel, is missing scenes near the end of the climactic battle, but the impact of Micheaux’s storytelling in “The Symbol of the Unconquered” remains. The title could be read two ways- either in reference to the Knights, placing them as a symbol of the white supremacy that had not been conquered by what advances African Americans had been able to make up to that point, or to Van Allen, and the other Black characters, who prosper by the end of Micheaux’s story. One thing is clear in Micheaux’s film- rejecting where you come from, not staying true to yourself, has consequences, as the eventual fate of Driscoll shows.
About a week prior to watching “The Symbol of the Unconquered,” I watched Rebecca Hall’s “Passing” at the Sundance Film Festival. That film, set in 1920s New York, is about two Black women who could either pass for white or Black, and one passes for white, the other for Black. I couldn’t help but think of that film as this one was going. Hall, a white woman, is coming from a very different place with that film than Micheaux, a Black man, was with this film, but similar themes of accepting who we are, and the consequences of what can happen if we don’t, exist in both films. I’ll discuss the way “Passing” explores them more when that film comes out, but I wanted to bring it up here because it was curious that I ended up watching both films within a week of one another, and they hit on similar ideas.
For me, “The Symbol of the Unconquered” has more going on on its surface than it does in terms of thematic depth, but then again, so does “The Birth of a Nation.” Micheaux, in telling this story, has as much of a bias in his storytelling as Griffith does, but the difference is that Micheaux is holding up a mirror to American to challenge its racial biases, whereas Griffith reveled in his. That one film is held in much higher esteem for its craft (which, admittedly, was revolutionary at the time), even as critics and historians acknowledge its painful racism, than the other- which is just as accomplished technically and emotionally, and not as toxic thematically- shows that white supremacy is still a real thing, and for the audience that probably needed to watch it the most, they’d rather accept Griffith’s whitewashed revision to Micheaux’s hard truths.
